


how to save a life

by drusillaes



Category: Scream Queens (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe -Canon Divergence, F/M, Like it's not super smutty but it's there, Running Away, Sadie Gets The Orgasms She Deserves, Sadie's Tragic Love Life, Sex, Takes place directly after the Green Meanie Summit, screw canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-05-31 00:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19414441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drusillaes/pseuds/drusillaes
Summary: Tasked with killing the love of his life, Cassidy Cascade needs to find away around it -without getting both him and Chanel Number Three murdered by the two remaining Green Meanies and wildcard Hester.So, they run away.





	1. i'm not alive without you

“I want all of the Chanels dead,” Nurse Ingrid Hoffel says determinedly. She snatches the headshot from Cassidy. “And I’m sorry if you don’t want to kill your little lovetoy, but my revenge is more of a priority than you _getting some._ ”

He looks to Wes Gardener for sympathy.

“She helped drive Gracie insane,” Wes replies heartlessly. “I’m sorry, kid, but I have to prioritize.”  
Hester claps her hands. “So it’s decided. Nurse Hoffel will take care of Chanel Number Three —”

“I’ll do it,” he hears himself saying, reaching for the photo. Hoffel snorts, but lets him take it. “Like hell you will. You’d rather kiss her than kill her.”  
“Yeah, I would. But if she has to die, I’d rather it be by my hands than any of you. So I can give her a fitting death.”

He looks at Hester pleadingly. “You understand that, don’t you Hester?”

By the way Hester’s expression darkens, he knows she’s thinking about that Chad guy. “Fine,” she says. “But she better be dead. Next order of business, who wants Chanel Oberlin?”

Hoffel and Gardener shout over each other while Hester screams for order, and Cassidy stares down at the glossy headshot of Number Three looking gloriously disinterested.

_Right. She’s just the only woman I’ve ever loved besides my mother._

_How hard could this be?_

So he tries to kill her when they sleep together that night, and after Cassidy’s given Chanel Number Three three toe-curling orgasms, he wraps his hands around her throat.

Number Three still sleeps, her earmuffs blocking out the world.He squeezes tighter. She still doesn’t wake.

_I can’t do this._

He thinks of his father, drowned in a swamp. He thinks of his mother, depending on him.

He lets go.

“You okay? You have bags under your eyes which usually denotes sleeplessness,” Chanel Number Three says in the morning as she straps on her heels. “I learned that from working here.”

He forces a smile. “I’m fine.”

Number Three tilts her head. “I’ll suck you off next time, okay? Chad Radwell used to say that helped him sleep. Also, he really liked saying mean things about other girls while he pretended to have sex with my corpse.”

Suddenly, Cassidy is irrationally glad that one of the other Green Meanies killed that Radwell guy.

“Let’s just get to the hospital,” he says, offering his hand. Number Three takes it delicately. _You’ll kill her there._

* * *

“We don’t really have any new patients since all those people started getting murdered,” Number Three says. She finds him during his break, hopping up onto an empty gurney and crossing her long, tanned legs. The effect is that her short orange skirt hikes up on her perfect thighs, and murder is the last thing on Cassidy’s mind right now.

“Y-yeah?” he manages. Number Three gives him a lewd smile, like she can read his mind…or maybe just his boner.

“Well, we have some time to kill, don’t we?” she asks.

“Chanel and Doctor Brock are expected in here any minute,” Cassidy murmurs. Number Three is suddenly very close to his face, her lips brushing against his. She tastes like oranges and mint, a combination that has no business being as alluring as it is.

She shrugs. “Let them watch,” she replies casually. “We can have a foursome.”  
He chokes on a laugh, pulling away from her. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”  
She smiles elusively, and he can’t help but kiss her.

_later_

Number Three fastens her bra, pulls on her crop top, adjusts her earmuffs, pops a bubblegum lollipop in her mouth, and leaves Cassidy alone in the emergency room.

He thinks of Gardner choking Chanel #7 with a pole. He thinks of Hoffel’s plan to boil Chanel in oil, and the fact that Hester orchestrated a mass murder.

He _cannot_ let any of them get their hands on Number Three.

* * *

“I have tomurder you,” he says that night when they’re getting ready for bed. His phone is turned off. He’s sure his mother is texting anxiously _where are you??_ but he couldn’t be bothered right now. Right now, he, the serial killer, has to save a life.

Ah, life’s little ironies.

To Number Three’s credit, she reacts quickly. “No you don’t, Cassidy,” she says. “But if you do, let me change into my silk. I’m not dying in on-sale sleepwear from Victoria’s Secret.”

“I love you,” he blurts out without meaning to. He clears his throat. “What I meant to say, is, the other Green Meanies held a summit. I can’t stop them from killing Chanel, but they promised to let me have you.”  
“So?”

“So, I need to fake your death. Then, we have to run away.”

He can tell she’s just a little swept up in the fantasy of being swooped away -or not. He cannot read her _at all_. But she takes a step closer, one hand toying with the sequins on her silver earmuffs.

“What about your mother?”  
“I’ve done my duty. The hospital will close down. She’ll be fine.”  
“What about Chanel?”  
He cups her tiny waist in his hands. “Chanel needs to die, Number Three. I’m not going to fight Hester Ulrich, Nurse Hoffel and Wes Gardener just so that —”

“Wait, Grace’s dad is one of the killers?” Number Three steps back, mild surprise flitting across her face. “Huh. He always was kind of a creep, and we did do horrible things to his daughter. Guess I should’ve seen that coming.”

 _Shit_. Another promise broken, not to expose the other Green Meanies. _Great going, Cassidy_ , his mother’s voice hisses in his ear.

“Please, Number Three. We have to fake your death tomorrow and leave for Blood Island tonight.”

“Huh. Alright,” Number Three decides. “I don’t really care about what happens to Number Five and Zayday and the others, but I’m going to miss Chanel.”

“She’d do the same if it was you,” Cassidy reminds his girlfriend, and that seems to decide her. “Okay,” she says. “How do we fake my murder?”


	2. she sought death in a queen-sized bed

“NUMBER THREE IS DEAD!” Chanel is screaming, screaming, screaming. Next to her, Number Five is trying to pull her into her arms, to comfort her, but Chanel shoves her minion off relentlessly. She crouches by the bloodied earmuffs. “You really saw the Green Meanie take her?”

“He dumped her in the swamp,” Cassidy confirms sadly. He touches the earmuffs reverently. He and Number Three had dumped a different corpse in the swamp, just in case, and the blood belonged to that cadaver. Luckily, the staff of the C.U.R.E. Institute are too incompetent to think of doing a simple blood test. Well, Zayday isn’t, but she hadn’t been around lately. And Brock isn’t either, but Cassidy had confided in him. Brock had confided that he might be a killer and also he’s in love with Hester, not Chanel, so the two doctors had parted as friends and agreed to keep each others’ secrets.

Number Five, that annoying cow, squinted suspiciously. “You watched the Green Meanie dump your girlfriend in the swamp and you didn’t do anything about it?”

“I tried to! He stabbed me in the leg and ran off with her body.” Cassidy shows the (self-inflicted) leg wound. It went deep. Number Three had been morbidly impressed. “I just assumed he dumped her in the swamp. I don’t know what he’s doing to her.”

“I actually liked Number Three,” Chanel whimpers, making the moment all about her as usual. “Minions! Comfort me!”

“You heard Chanel, get comforting!” Number Five snapped at the few remaining minions as they formed an awkward semicircle around the sobbing blonde, all too scared to touch her.

“I’m putting in my resignation,” Cassidy tells Cathy Munsch later that day. “With Number Three gone, I just need some time to grieve.”  
“…Right,” Munsch doesn’t look exactly delighted. “Well, I’m sorry for your loss, Dr. Cascade. You’re always welcome here at the C.U.R.E. Institute.”  
“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Number Five informs him that Chanel and Brock are having incredibly violent grief sex and that’s why Brock isn’t there to see him off.

“…Okay,” Cassidy says, and _god_ he’s going to be glad to be out of here.

He finds Chanel Number Three at the airport. She wears all black, from her veil to her Louboutins.  
“Hey, stranger,” he says. Her frown makes him think she might not be over the whole, ‘let’s run away and leave your friends to get murdered’ thing.

“Hey,” he takes both her hands. “Number Three. It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

“Sam would say that’s some patriarchal misogyny meant to in-code the idea that I am your property,” Chanel Number Three says, and then she starts crying.

It’s so uncharacteristic of her that Cassidy freezes for a moment, not sure what to do, before awkwardly feeling around in his pockets for a Kleenex. He finds one, and she sniffles and wipes fervently at her mascara smudges.

“Who’s Sam?” Cassidy asks.  
“We should get on the plane now,” Chanel Number Three replies, lifting her luggage. She doesn’t let Cassidy carry it for her.

“I’ve never travelled coach before,” Number Three observes as the plane takes off. She has the window seat, and her eyes glitter with some unreadable emotion behind her veil.

“Welcome to being poor,” Cassidy replies with no real heat, glancingat the in-flight magazine.

“I’m going to miss making people do things for me,” Number Three muses. “But I suppose it’ll be alright. It beats being dead, anyway.”

As if on cue, Cassidy’s cell goes off with a text from Brock.

_Green Meanies are onto you! Get out of the country as soon as possible!  
Sincerely, Dr. Brock Holt, Harvard Graduate._

Cassidy sighs.

“Who’s that?” Number Three asks.  
“Brock. He says that the Green Meanies have discovered we’re gone.”

“Is Chanel…?”

Cassidy texts back, _chanel??_

_Still alive.Wearing everyone’s patience to the bone._

_Sincerely, Dr. Brock Holt, Harvard Graduate._

“She’s still alive,” Cassidy says, and Number Three visibly relaxes. “Maybe once we’re out of the country we can warn her.”

Cassidy thinks Chanel’s probably getting boiled, macheted, or axed as they speak, but he doesn’t say that. “Maybe,” he says instead, neutrally. Number Three reaches for his hand and squeezes it excitedly. “Everything’s going to be okay,” she says, like she actually believes it, and Cassidy’s spirits lift. Everything he had to do was worth it, just to make sure she’s alive and well.

“Who’s Sam?” Cassidy asks, as gently as he can, that night in the hotel. They’re at a layover in Deadville, Mississippi. Cassidy had chosen a less direct route in case Hoffel or Hester decided to track them. Number Three is already in bed, and she freezes at the question like a deer in headlights. She looks afraid, and Cassidy immediately backtracks.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says, reaching out to hold Number Three’s hand. “I’m here for you, okay? Nobody’s ever made me feel alive like you have, Chanel Number Three. Not even killing. So, if there’s anything you ever need to talk about -”

“Sam was my lover,” Number Three blurts out. “Chanel called her ‘Predatory Lez’.”

“Classy,” Cassidy says with a grimace. He doesn’t understand what Number Three or Brock see in the soon-to-be-dead Chanel Oberlin.

“We were in love. At least, I think we could have been. Sam helped me realize I was pansexual. We were alibuddies, and we were going to keep each other safe.” Number Three wipes her eyes despite the fact that she’s not crying, perhaps for something to do with her hands.

“But the Red Devil killed her. Well, I killed her. She spilled my secret in Truth or Dare, and I was angry. So I sent her down to the basement to sit in the haunted bathtub. The Red Devil put plastic wrap over her face. It was all my fault.”

Cassidy wraps an arm around Number Three, pulls her close. She doesn’t cry exactly, but her shoulders shake uncontrollably in a rare show of emotion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know literally nobody cares about this story but i'm writing it anyway so uhh fuck you

**Author's Note:**

> I was rewatching Scream Queens and realized there's like zero fic about this ship and I needed to write some.


End file.
